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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26046481">sometimes you're born with it</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticaltorque/pseuds/mysticaltorque'>mysticaltorque</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Katekyou Hitman Reborn!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Female Sawada Tsunayoshi, POV Female Character, fredrico lives and is decimo au, kasuga is Trying Her Best, kimiko being a Disaster, nono never seals kasuga, tiny rain assassin growing up</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:27:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,480</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26046481</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticaltorque/pseuds/mysticaltorque</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yamamato Kimiko, self-proclaimed baseball ace preteen social pariah and certified natural disaster by all of Nanimori's insurers, wants to stay close forever to Sawada Kasuga, Sasagawa Kyoko's least noticeable clique member, Nanimori's number one shady assassin target. Sure, they only met minutes ago but this is how love at first sight goes, right???</p><p>(or, due to an incident as an infant, Kimiko grows up constantly in Dying Will Mode, like Ryohei. this goes exactly as well as you would expect a natural assassin being given superpowers from birth in the same town as a baby sky with hyper intuition would go)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sawada Tsunayoshi/Yamamoto Takeshi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>66</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Rule 63 Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>sometimes you're born with it</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/anachronist/gifts">anachronist</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>apologies for the relative lack of tsuna/takeshi, kimiko gripped the story and Refused to let go what was going to be a short flashback so its All About Her Now.</p><p>kimiko means 'noble', and one of the kanji readings for 'takeshi' is also noble</p><p>kasuga is from lady kasuga, tokugawa iemitsu's wet nurse and thus Somewhat similar to the sawada male naming scheme</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Kimiko is four and the days are long and sticky with heat, she cries when at her mother’s funeral. It’s what’s supposed to happen, according to the aunties in the neighborhood who promised her no one would mind, and so she heaves great hacking sobs that leave her struggling for breath and lightheaded, cooed over by everyone who comes. Her father was still and quiet and had to be reminded to answer in anything more than grunts, outside of shop hours. He is still and quiet yet everyone who walks away from him looks happier than they did when they walked in. Despite crying like the aunties told her was alright, everyone looks sad when they walk away from her, their brows crumpled and their lips tight. Clearly, Kimiko decides after the funeral, she has been going about this the wrong way, without her mother giving her advice. </p><p> </p><p>“Papa?” she asks, “Could you help me?”</p><p> </p><p>She has learnt the first two forms of Shigure Soen Ryu before the ice has melted again, but never quite understands the advice she is given on how to interact with others her age at the sandbox or on the slide.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Kimiko is eight when she watches the high school baseball team play, as a favour to the auntie who is looking after her whose son is on the second string. She is entranced. The speed of play is slow, but the bursts of energy and the teamwork needed to tag players out intrigues her, as she watches batters hit pop ups and fouls and pitchers throw trick shots and hardballs and fastballs. She is especially fascinated by the group hugs at the end and the mention Kenta-san has walking back, of teamwork and trust in teammates even if you don’t know them all that well. Kimiko has never trusted anyone but her father. But in baseball, she can learn to trust, and make friends, and have fun!</p><p> </p><p>Kimiko buys balls and a bat, and badgers her father into setting up a pitching machine in the backyard. In this, her time with the sword has aided her- not even a month in she can throw a ball faster and harder than the pitching machine can, as long as she keeps her calm, as her father always reminds her. Kimiko cannot remember a time she was not calm, and thus assumes she is trained enough to be presentable for a team.</p><p> </p><p>The neighbourhood kids don’t let her play after she accidentally breaks a middle schoolers collarbone with a pitch, and tackles one of her primary school sempai into a post after he began to curse the Hibari family- you never know when they could be watching. Kimiko has learnt a far more important lesson, however.</p><p> </p><p>There is no one else to spar with other than her father, and against him she always loses. He is older than her, so he can read more. He has longer legs than her, so he can serve sushi more efficiently than her. He smiles better, so he can put people at ease more than her ‘creepy face’ can. He understands the complex social games that are played, and thus can win against more people in that arena than she can. When her mother was around, more recently known as her jetsetting babysitter, her mother was better at lying than she was. In short, Kimiko was a girl accustomed to defeat unless winning a victory against herself. That game, no matter how sloppy or how many injuries were gained, Kimiko learnt what it felt like to <em> win </em>. And, more than sword lessons or meditation or listening to her father or mimicking her babysitter or trusting others, she really really loved it.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>This, of course, is where if a certain white-haired supervillain was drawing comparisons between realities, things start to go off the more conventional rails.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Kimiko is twelve, she murders her first man. To say it was an accident would be a lie, as Kimiko does not bring her bat to school after numerous pleas from the school, various classmates, the entire baseball team, and several odd middle school delinquents claiming to be disciplinary committee members. She was thoughtful, and hid it in an alleyway behind a dumpster. She took advice from her mother, who claimed a spare pair of latex gloves handy didn’t do anyone any harm until they were needed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>While the gunpoint standoff between a Momokyokai member and a Hibari police member was already fairly tense, the fact that the officer was slowly bleeding from a gut wound seemed enough of a reason for Kimiko to put a month-old pair of latex gloves (from hamburger day in home economics class!) and shift into the half forgotten first form, before charging at the Momokyokai member with all her might, feeling more aware than ever before. The form knocks the yakuza over, with no open wounds due to the blunt nature of the baseball bat- something Kimiko regrets despite knowing the dual use of the bat- weapon and way to practice batting forms on her way home- so, feeling calm and ready to </span>
  <em>
    <span>win</span>
  </em>
  <span>, she extends her strength through the blade as her father told her, and winds back and crumples the Momokyokai’s skull in. Pleased, she surveys her victory, however oddly blue the late afternoon lighting is before remembering there was someone else in the alley. Someone she had technically saved. She turns around and comes eye to eye with the barrel of a gun. Kimiko hasn’t seen many guns, but that’s no reason to not respect one, even if the officer has started to lower the gun and shoo her out of the alleyway. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kimiko has always been told to listen to the police, so she walks out and immediately reassess her place in the multiverse. Sasagawa Kyoko is a bit further ahead, talking to her friend Hana who always tries to heckle Kimiko into acting more ladylike. Neither of them were particularly important, however, or the rest of the crowd keeping an eye on her as she stared at the new center of her universe. Sawada Kasuga, lazy, forgetful, a poor student and in none of Kimiko’s primary school classes looks back, not just at Kimiko’s exterior and the bits of blood she forgot to clean off as they weren’t on her gloves where blood usually was when she roughed up thugs, even if she hadn’t killed anyone before this- but Sawada seemed to look through that, though Kimiko’s calm and into the part of her that wanted to </span>
  <em>
    <span>win</span>
  </em>
  <span> no matter the cost and accept that as a part of her, no matter how Kimiko hides, told by her mother and her father and her teachers that a lady must be at the very least appear modest.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> It is unsettling, one of the most intimately uncomfortable sensations Kimiko has ever experienced, and she wants to never leave Kasuga and her sight again. Somewhere along this epiphany, Kimiko and Sawada ‘call me Kasu-chan’ tossed out in the flurry of introductions, are ushered into a nearby coffee shop and are both given orders Kimiko somehow knows neither of them knew about, despite not exchanging a word with Kasu-chan besides introductions, just unblinking eye contact, broken only when Kasu-chan twitches or blinks oddly, as if reacting to sounds Kimiko cannot hear. They pass an afternoon like that, and then Kasu-chan extracts herself from Kyoko’s friend group despite Hana’s warning of how creepy ‘baseball girl’ was to trail Kimiko home for a sleepover as invited and be introduced to her father, who looks oddly unsurprised and embraces Kimiko after Kasu-chan is upstairs setting up her futon, stepping back only to tell her he’s so proud she found someone like Sawada Kasuga. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<span>Kimiko has listened to her father since her mother’s funeral, even when she hasn’t been practicing the sword these past few years like her father may have wanted to. So when, in lowered tones, Yamamoto Tsuyoshi explains Sawada Kasuga’s unique situation and vulnerabilities, speaking not as a father or her master in swordplay but as a senior in the business of protection, Kimiko listens, and past her calm part of her rejoices in her choice, that she would be able to </span>
  <em>
    <span>win</span>
  </em>
  <span> even more by staying near her friend. Kasu-chan really did deserve to be called her best friend, and Kasu-chan agreed when Kimiko brought it up the next day, admitting to not really having any best friends within Kyoko’s group despite being allowed to tag around and everyone being kind- before this no one had taken an interest in her before. Kimiko thinks of the man in the alleyway and of the people her father has ‘removed’ and a phone number given for a Hibari-run ‘public sanitation service’, and can tell that even though Kasu-chan shows relatively little sign, Kimiko also feels like Kasu-chan already knows.</span>
</p>
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